Slavery justified… according to the Bible, or at least Joseph Ruggles Wilson’s interpretation of it

I had forgotten all about this story until I came across it again last night… and that is particularly bad considering I included the story in my book about Staunton and Augusta County, Virginia in the Civil War. Nonetheless…

President Woodrow Wilson’s (fyi, his full name was Thomas Woodrow Wilson) father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson (born in Steubenville, Ohio) was a Presbyterian minister. After moving to Virginia and becoming the pastor of Staunton’s Presbyterian Church (1855-1857), it was said that he became “unreconstructedly Southern” in values and politics.

The family left this residence before the Civil War, and moved to Augusta, Georgia (1857-1870) where Joseph Wilson continued in his role as a Presbyterian minister. There, his “Mutual Relation of Masters and Slaves as Taught in the Bible” sermon of January 6, 1861, at the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, displayed his attitude and drew a great deal of interest. When asked to submit his sermon for publication two days later, Wilson responded, “It is surely high time that the Bible view of slavery should be examined, and that we should begin to meet the infidel fanatacism of our infatuated enemies upon the elevated ground of a divine warrant for the institution we are resolved to cherish.” By December, Wilson was directly involved in establishing the Confederate or Southern Presbyterian Church.

You really have to read the sermon to grasp this thing. It can be found online through this link at UNC’s Documenting the American South Project.

Not content-wise, but presentation-wise. There’s a boatload of page-breaks imposed by UNC’s system that would interfere with reading it on my webpage. At least IMO. Also, I wasn’t sure when I sent the previous note if I wanted to include the preliminary correspondence, but after reading it I think I will include it.

I just did a cut-and-paste from what showed up in the link you gave. I didn’t go looking for anything more. Since I reformat stuff for the sake of appearance, a little editorial work is expected and not considered a pain.

By the way, do you know of (or have) a picture of Rev. Wilson? I imagine a good biography of Pres. Wilson would include a photo of his father. I like to have “headshots” of the men whose words I am publishing.

Servants and slaves are not the same thing. Also slavery in the Bible was different from the slavery we had in this country. I believe it was during Abraham’s time in the Old Testament that after a slave had worked for his master for seven years he had the choice of leaving or staying. If he chose to stay he stayed for life but was given some land and livestock of his own and even got some slaves himself. If he left he was given some livestock but could not come back.

Coly, I agree. Therefore, it is interesting to see how things were seen by those in the 19th century. Did they really believe it or was this a way to convince themselves that what they practiced was right? Was it merely a matter of justifying a particular way of life and protecting a major source of income? I’d be curious to see a study of 19th century views when it came to interpreting the difference between Biblical slaves and servants and how many saw them as one in the same (and comparable to 19th century slaves)… as well as how many others did not.

On another note, I think it is quite something to see Joseph Ruggles Wilson’s beliefs when considering his son’s views on race.

That is actually from the Torah, the Law of Moses. In the English Bible the passage can be found in Leviticus 25:39-54. The mandated freedom, for foreign-born slaves, comes in what is called “the year of Jubilee,” or every 50 years. Nevertheless, eventual freedom was promised and, in most instances (according to Jewish historian Flavius Josephus), delivered at some point. The every-seven-years provision was for Hebrews who had to sell themselves into slavery to settle a debt. The passage related to this and those who wanted to stay with their masters and provision for them is found in Deuteronomy 15:12-18.

On a side note, uses, or rather misuses, of the Bible to justify slavery, in light of the passages listed above, do not wash with me, no matter what era we’re talking. In my opinion, this can only be attributed to a deliberate misuse of Scripture to justify injustice, which is itself against the teachings of the Bible. See passages in what Jewish scholars call “the Prophets” for a more detailed examination of these issues. In the English Bible, these are the books from Isaiah through Malachi. Jesus’ teachings, as outlined in the Gospels (Matthew through John), also examine this issue as it related to how the Torah was misused by Jewish religious leaders of his day.

Thanks Greg. Again, I really wonder if they (some of them) believed this in their hearts or if they quickly embraced this because it gave moral justification for what they were doing, as slaveholders. Surely this made some feel better, especially being delivered by a minister.

That’s not an easy answer because we can;t speak to these people about their personal beliefs. So, unless they left a written record of their thoughts, we would have to surmise “they quickly embraced this because it gave moral justification for what they were doing, as slaveholders.” I would agree. It would make “some feel better, especially being delivered by a minister,” but, in my mind, it is still a misuse of Scripture. But, I’ll let it go. It might just be that I’m trying to impose my thinking on people of a different era. I know better than that.

Not meaning to point it out as a negative, but rather a positive… that’s an excellent self-awareness statement when it comes to recognizing your projection of perspective on the past. It’s something we all need to be conscious of in interpreting and conveying history. It’s exactly what I mean by the “pursuit of objectivity.” We’ll never get to “Objectivity Utopia,” but the fact that we are aware of ourselves and our own “processing mechanism” is so important. We all need to check ourselves and even “call ourselves” more often. I think it lends a great deal to better history.

It seems there must be something written about the perspective of slaveholders who believed that they were doing right by the Bible. I think it is also interesting to consider how the abolitionists philosophies must have truly troubled slaveholders and their ideas of morality. It would be an excellent topic for a thesis.

No offense taken. I just thought about what I had written and knew I had responded to gut instinct. I plan to start my masters this fall at Sam Houston State. They have a program I can take, from my initial research, all online except for researching, writing and defending my thesis. Perhaps it will at that.

Good luck! These online programs are much more dynamic and interactive than some folks imagine. The interaction in graduate history is great and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the seminars! Much better than the old one-way “down-loads” of information that usually came in undergraduate studies. I often think that blogging is about as close as one can get to the experience had in the graduate history classroom (excepting, of course, the emotional exchanges that can result in blogs). Sounds like you might be moving in the right direction for a good thesis topic as well.